Sunday, December 14, 2008

This has been an interesting comic, because people I talk about xkcd with seem to like it less than I do, which makes me feel all confused inside. It's not great, but I get the idea at least, which is that he set up an elaborate hoax and the woman didn't notice or care. I know, you are thinking that is obvious, but apparently it is confusing people. Perhaps the confusion is that people are confusing his hoax with the possible hoax that originally possibly befell the Mary Celeste which you can read all about on wikipedia, not that it's relevant.

Where was I? Oh yes. I was wondering why explaining the entire hoax so early on is supposed to be subtle. Because...yeah that's kind of the opposite of subtle. As is dumping a bunch of mysterious woodchips somewhere. So...maybe it is a little weird. But I will give him credit for at least coming up with crazy details of a crazy plan, and not just alluding to the idea that there is a plan, and trust me guys, it's crazy.

So anyway, after reading the whole thing several times, I am just happy that it doesn't make me as mad as usual, though I'm getting a little annoyed at the "everything is about me and my crazy habits" formulation.

And in my continuing fascination with Abstruse Goose, I found comic 90 to be utterly unsettling and not in any way funny, made worse by the children's book style of drawing the author uses, all in a way that reminds me of the worst of the xkcd romance comics.

Anyway, with that particularly uninspired post, I am perfectly glad to hand the mighty reigns of this blog over to Rob for the next week or two. I'm still not totally sure how all this will work out, but I think I need a break. I will of course still be reading and managing everything, and no doubt commenting. But I think a temporary change of voice would do the blog well.

Posted by
Carl

4 comments:

Allow me to explain. Dumping the wood chips in the hope that the hoaxee would take them to a lab for analysis and uncover a mystery is the "too subtle part". The explanation is after the subtle hoax failed (because she just threw the wood away).

I give this one an 8 out of 10. Mostly because I too constantly attempt jokes or pranks which either nobody gets or cares about. Could this possibly a comment about some reactions to 514? Just a thought

Please, internet, don't let the Mary Celeste become an inside joke of any sort...at least not due to this bland shot in the dark.

This one lost me by skipping humor and feeling more like "whoa random wood chips lol," though if it relieves some of Randall's "hey guys Wikipedia's awesome" pressure then then some good has come of it.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

Divided into two convenient categories, based on whether you think this website

Rob's Rants

When he's not flipping a shit over prescriptivist and descriptivist uses of language, xkcdsucks' very own Rob likes writing long blocks of text about specific subjects. Here are some of his excellent refutations of common responses to this site. Think of them as a sort of in-depth FAQ, for people inclined to disagree with this site.